Keyword: cyberattack

Lost phone service for days and internet has not returned for a month now. It's area wide and I believe it was a cyber attack. I now have a new internet provider that does not provide an e-mail address. Recommendations & reviews from Freepers for an e-mail service would be appreciated. Oh and I am now logged on:)

Cyberwar: The damage done by Chinese hackers grows worse by the day, with news that they stole a treasure trove of blackmail-worthy material on those with high security clearances. What's Obama's reaction?

Hackers stole personnel data and Social Security numbers for every federal employee, a government worker union said Thursday, charging that the cyberattack on U.S. employee data is far worse than the Obama administration has acknowledged. J. David Cox, president of the American Federal of Government Employees, said in a letter to OPM director Katherine Archuleta that based on OPM's internal briefings, the hackers stole military records and veterans' status information, address, birth date, job and pay history, health insurance, life insurance, and pension information; age, gender, race data. "Based on the sketchy information OPM has provided, we believe that the...

A group of hackers affiliated with ISIS are threatening to carry out a cyber attack—dubbed “Message to America”—against a number of targets 2 p.m. EST today. The targets were not identified on ISIS forums and social channels but the hackers are promising something “surprising” that “will frighten America”.

The United States voiced concern Friday over a report that China manipulated international Internet traffic intended for a major Chinese Web service company and used it for a cyberattack on U.S. sites. State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke’s comments follow complaints from anti-online censorship group Greatfire.org that Chinese authorities carried out denial-of-service attacks in late March that intermittently shut down San Francisco-based Github, a U.S.-based computer-code sharing site that hosts some of Greatfire’s data. Greatfire.org said it was a direct target of similar attacks earlier that month. […] The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for...

President Barack Obama on Wednesday created the first sanctions program that would allow the U.S. to penalize individuals and entities overseas who engage in malicious cyberattacks and cyber spying. "Cyber threats pose one of the most serious economic and national security challenges to the United States," Obama said in a statement after signing an executive order creating the sanctions regime. The order gives the U.S. the authority to sanction individuals, though no specific penalties were announced. Obama said the sanctions would apply to those engaged in malicious cyber activity that aims to harm critical infrastructure, damage computer systems, and steal...

At one point in Hillary ClintonÂ’s slightly less than marathon press conference on Tuesday, the former secretary of state insisted that there were no security breaches of her personal Â“homebrewÂ” email server. How could she possibly know this? The secretary of stateÂ’s emails represent a high-value target for cyber hackers operating out of foreign intelligence agencies, and a breach is unlikely to leave a trace of any activity that the layman or even a cyber-intelligence professional would notice. Just ask the State Department. Â“Overlooked in the controversy over Hillary Clintonâ€™s use of a private email server, is the fact...

A common plot device in action movies is for terrorists to seize control of the air traffic control system, so they can crash plans into the ground or into each other. It's always seemed a bit far-fetched, until this week.

Anthem Inc., the country’s second-biggest health insurer, said hackers broke into a database containing personal information for about 80 million of its customers and employees in what is likely to be the largest data breach disclosed by a health-care company. Investigators are still determining the extent of the incursion, which was discovered last week, and Anthem said it is likely that “tens of millions” of records were stolen. The health insurer said the breach exposed names, birthdays, addresses and Social Security numbers but doesn’t appear to involve medical information or financial details such as credit-card or bank-account numbers, nor are...

Today, Anthem Inc., the second largest health insurer in America revealed that hackers broke into the company’s servers and stole social security numbers and other personal information. This is a massive data breach with the potential to expose the information of nearly 80 million Anthem customers and has the potential to be the largest health care related data breach in history. The company notes that accounts associated with Anthem Blue Cross, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia, Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Amerigroup, Caremore, Unicare, Healthlink, and DeCare were all part of...

North Korea is having major Internet problems, just days after President Barack Obama promised a proportional response to the devastating hacks against Sony. The country, which the FBI accused last week of the cyberattack, is suffering a total Internet outage that experts at DYN Research said is out of the ordinary, as first reported by North Korea Tech. According to the research firm, North Korea's Internet connectivity grew steadily worse beginning Sunday night, and then went completely offline Monday morning. "I haven't seen such a steady beat of routing instability and outages in KP before," Doug Madory, director of Internet...

James Cook December 22, 2014 North Korea appears to be suffering from a cyberattack that has brought down the country's internet connection. North Korea Tech is reporting, via Vox, that there were frequent outages on North Korea's internet network over the weekend. This chart from Dyn Research shows that North Korean websites have been going through regular outages: North Korea internet outagesDyn Research/North Korea Tech Internet connection issues aren't definite proof that someone is trying to attack North Korea. The country's internet is only accessed by a handful of people, so it doesn't take much to force it offline. Officially...

n February, Iranian hackers took down the computer system of gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson’s casino empire, wiping hard drives clean and shutting down email. Las Vegas Sands, the world’s largest gaming company, was devastated by the attack. But until a Bloomberg Businessweek report Thursday night, the company had never revealed the extent of the hack. Coming months before the recent hack on Sony Pictures, the hit on Sands is now believed to be the first major destructive cyberattack on a U.S. business, although there are likely others that have gone unreported. From the instant the offensive started, Las Vegas Sands...

Jamie DettmerFox News Jihadists in the Middle East are ramping up efforts to mount a massive cyber attack on the U.S., with leaders from both Islamic State and Al Qaeda - including a hacker who once broke into former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Gmail account - recruiting web savvy radicals, FoxNews.com has learned. Islamic militants brag online that it is only a matter of time before they manage to pull off a highly disruptive attack on America’s infrastructure or financial system. In addition, Islamic State, the terror group that claims to have established a caliphate across Syria and Iraq,...

ISIS is hoping to carry out major attacks on the West that could wreak major havocâ€”and they could do it from anywhere in the world. Islamic State militants are planning the creation of a 'cyber caliphate' protected by their own encryption software - from behind which they will launch massive hacking attacks on the U.S. and the West. Both Islamic State and Al Qaeda claim to be actively recruiting skilled hackers in a bid to create a team of jihadist computer experts capable of causing devastating cyber disruptions to Western institutions. [â€¦] Large numbers of Islamic State fighters are young,...

The NSA cyberwarfare program, called MonsterMind, uses software to look for traffic patterns indicating possible foreign cyberattacks, according to Snowden, quoted in a lengthy profile in Wired. MonsterMind could automatically block a cyberattack from entering the U.S., then retaliate against the attackers, according to the Wired story. Snowden, when he was working as an NSA contractor, was concerned that MonsterMind could lead to misdirected counterattacks. "These attacks can be spoofed," he told Wired. "You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. And then we end up shooting...

eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) said beginning later today it will be asking eBay users to change their passwords because of a cyberattack that compromised a database containing encrypted passwords and other non-financial data. After conducting extensive tests on its networks, the company said it has no evidence of the compromise resulting in unauthorized activity for eBay users, and no evidence of any unauthorized access to financial or credit card information, which is stored separately in encrypted formats. However, changing passwords is a best practice and will help enhance security for eBay users.

SNIPPET: "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say Russian sports officials said they will beef up security at forthcoming sports events and the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games in the wake of deadly explosions at Boston's marathon that killed three people, and injured over 140 others." "Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics security will be beefed up following Boston Marathon explosions, officials say" SNIPPET: "The World Athletics Championship takes place in Moscow on Aug 10-18, and the event is seen as a dress rehearsal for the 2014 Winter Games in the Black Sea resort...

Late last week it was learned that some 40 million charge cards were obtained using physical processing systems located in Target retail locations nationwide. Though no details of the how the hack attack was executed have been released by Target, the FBI or other agencies investigating the breach, it is likely that the processing machines themselves were compromised. Target claims that the hack was sophisticated, but on the technical side, once hackers found a way into the credit card processing machines, probably via remote entry from servers somewhere in Eastern Europe or Russia, the theft of credit card data itself...

Share on Tumblr digg ScreenshotHow the New York Times web site looked during the hack. The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a Pro-Assad regime hacker group, claims it gained control over a handful of web domains of major media sites including Twitter, The New York Times, and Huffington Post U.K. The group said in a tweet that it took over the Twitter.com domain. The SEA said it was able to change some of the basic information in Twitter's domain registry, such as the admin name and the email address for contacts, at DomainTools.com, here. However, it looks like that information has been...

Outgoing DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano Warns of ‘Serious’ Cyber Attack, Unprecedented Natural Disaster By Mike Levine @mlevinereports Follow on Twitter Aug 27, 2013 10:39am Outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano delivers farewell remarks today at the National Press Club in Washington reflecting on four-plus years as a member of President Obama's cabinet. Credit: Mike Levine/ABC News The outgoing Homeland Security Secretary has a warning for her successor: A massive and “serious” cyber attack on the U.S. homeland is coming, and a natural disaster — the likes of which the nation has never seen — is also likely on its...

Earlier this week, I wrote about the dirty tricks campaign against journalist Amir Taheri following his revelation that, in a private meeting in Iraq last July with Iraqi leaders, Barack Obama tried to persuade them to delay the agreement being hammered out with the US government on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to this account, which quoted Iraq’s foreign minister Hoshya Zebari (pictured), Obama had thus privately sought to undermine an American government foreign policy initiative – an explosive revelation. Taheri subsequently dismissed as tendentious Camp Obama’s response which he said deliberately confused two separate agreements under...

In order to combat a wave of cyberattacks that have rattled the US banking industry since last year, the FBI has given certain banking executives extensive briefings of their classified investigations. The collaboration is part of a new policy being initiated by the FBI to try and foster closer cooperation between authorities and the private sector. It reportedly involved a number of bank officials being given high-level security clearance before a video conference briefing last month. During the briefing, the FBI’s executive assistant director Richard McFeely urged bank executives to share any data they have on cyberattacks they’ve suffered.

It was a brazen bank heist, but a 21st-century version in which the criminals never wore ski masks, threatened a teller or set foot in a vault. In two precision operations that involved people in more than two dozen countries acting in close coordination and with surgical precision, thieves stole $45 million from thousands of A.T.M.'s in a matter of hours. In New York City alone, the thieves responsible for A.T.M. withdrawals struck 2,904 machines over 10 hours starting on Feb. 19, withdrawing $2.4 million. The operation included sophisticated computer experts operating in the shadowy world of Internet hacking, manipulating...

Middle East- and North Africa-based criminal hackers are preparing cyberattacks this week against the websites of high-profile U.S. government agencies, banks and other companies, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The attacks, dubbed #OpUSA, for Operation USA, will begin Tuesday, the department said in a warning bulletin circulated to the private sector last week. The bulletin was first obtained and posted online by blogger and cybercrime expert Brian Krebs.

Hackers launched a coordinated cyberattack on Israel over the weekend in an attempt to “wipe Israel off the map of the Internet,” defacing some 20,000 Israeli Facebook accounts and nearly 2,000 Israeli websites. The anarchist hacking collective known as Anonymous formally launched “Operation Israel” on Sunday, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The stated goal of the attack was to wreak havoc on Israeli servers, government websites, and Internet users. The hackers penetrated and defaced multiple Israeli websites including government, schools, banks, and a website for children with cancer, according to regional media reports. Among the government websites breached were...

How To Protect Your Computers, Networks From Anonymous Israel Cyber AttackBy Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem, Israel --- April 2, 2013 … Threats have been made against the people of Israel for thousands of years. The latest threat now comes from a less macho, publicity seeking Internet group called Anonymous. Anonymous says that on April 7, 2013 it will "erase Israel from the Internet." It ain't gonna happen. Not today, not April 7 and not next year. “OpIsrael,” which is being organized by anti-Zionist hackers, are said to be targeting the 100 largest Websites in Israel, including banks, credit card...

A Dutch web-hosting company caused disruption and the global slowdown of the internet, according to a not-for-profit anti-spam organization. The interruptions came after Spamhaus, a spam-fighting group based in Geneva, temporarily added the Dutch firm, CyberBunker, to a blacklist that is used by e-mail providers to weed out spam. Cyberbunker is housed in a five-story former NATO bunker and famously offers its services to any website “except child porn and anything related to terrorism". As such it has often been linked to behaviour that anti-spam blacklist compilers have condemend. It retaliated with a huge 'denial of service attack'. These work...

The 2009 cyberattack by the U.S. and Israel that crippled Iran’s nuclear program by sabotaging industrial equipment constituted “an act of force” and was likely illegal under international law, according to a manual commissioned by NATO’s cyber defense center in Estonia. “Acts that kill or injure persons or destroy or damage objects are unambiguously uses of force,” according to “The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare.” Michael N. Schmitt, the manual’s lead author, told The Washington Times that “according to the U.N. charter, the use of force is prohibited, except in self-defense.” Under the charter, states...

The Defense Science Board's new report on protecting the Pentagon's computer networks calls for the development of a special force armed with its own bombers, cruise missiles, and cyber weapons to respond to a devastating cyber attack. Kind of like a mini, conventionally-armed Strategic Command for cyber deterrence. We've heard Pentagon leaders acknowledge that they are building up their offensive cyber capabilities to deter destructive cyber attacks that could harm thousands or even millions of Americans. However, the new report says that the U.S. must go further to "ensure the President has options beyond a nuclear-only response to a catastrophic...

Last week, the American computer security firm Mandiant released a detailed study shedding light on the secret cybercorps of the Chinese government. The “Shanghai Group,” or Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army, is believed to operate out of a nondescript 12-story building (above) on the outskirts of Shanghai. Over the past six years, Mandiant claims to have tracked thousands of attacks on American industry, business, government and military targets originating from that area. Given the ubiquity of information technology, the threat of cyberattacks will continue to grow. The scope of these assaults can range from accessing confidential information and...

WASHINGTON – The United States now is facing two serious national security challenges, but they aren’t expected to be addressed effectively because of the serious budgetary headaches Congress has created, and a virtually deadlocked legislature on just about every issue pending, according to report from Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. And the White House apparently isn’t paying attention. The first is the growing concern of the impact that an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, event – either natural or manmade – could have on the national grid system, on which the Department of Defense has a 99 percent dependency. The other concern...

The wave of distributed denial of service attacks that hit U.S. banks in October was next to nothing compared to what could happen if cybercriminals actually carry through with their plans for next year. According to a report released today by McAfee Labs, an impending attack on U.S. financial institutions—dubbed Project Blitzkrieg—isn’t only a possibility, it’s a “credible threat.” “McAfee Labs believes that Project Blitzkrieg is a credible threat to the financial industry and appears to be moving forward as planned,” the report reads. “Although Project Blitzkrieg hasn’t yet infected thousands of victims and we cannot directly confirm any cases...

SNIPPET: "Social media is no longer simply a fun way to share updates on the harmless idiosyncrasies of our lives. It can undermine national security, and there ought to be a more robust discussion between the Bay Area technology world and Washington on what to do about it. Cyber-terrorism, especially the potential for electronic tampering with U.S. industrial or military installations, is a paramount national security threat that Washington is working to forestall. We're all working to protect our accounts from hackers. But the cyber-threat getting far less public attention involves the social media networks we use every day and the...

Wife's bank card was denied use yesterday. Bank said their on line service was not working. I suggested Iran was mounting a cyber attack due to the war footings around Israel. Wife said I was paranoid. I did find a September article (FreeBeacon.com/iran-cyber-attacks-step-up) about Iran cyber attacking banks. Officials tried to blame The Video LOL but the article said it was Iran being upset about sanctions. Article said attacks were ongoing. Any Freepers know of a good website that reports current cyber attacks?

The U.S. is at war, a cyber war. And businesses and government are at risk, said Eric Rosenbach, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy in an interview with CNBC. "I read my intel brief every morning at 5:30 a.m. and it's never a very good news story at all," Rosenbach said. "There are a lot more attacks, and I hate to admit it but I fear that there will be some type of spectacular attack against the United States or one of our allies before there is comprehensive legislation and real appreciation to take this seriously." Just one...

WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials are increasingly convinced that Iran was the origin of a serious wave of network attacks that crippled computers across the Saudi oil industry and breached financial institutions in the United States, episodes that contributed to a warning last week from Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta that the United States was at risk of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor.” (snip) Among American officials, suspicion has focused on the “cybercorps” that Iran’s military created in 2011 — partly in response to American and Israeli cyberattacks on the Iranian nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz — though there is no hard...

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta warned Thursday that the United States was facing the possibility of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor” and was increasingly vulnerable to foreign computer hackers who could dismantle the nation’s power grid, transportation system, financial networks and government... ...Defense officials insisted that Mr. Panetta’s words were not hyperbole, and that he was responding to a recent wave of cyberattacks on large American financial institutions. He also cited an attack in August on the state oil company Saudi Aramco, which infected and made useless more than 30,000 computers. But Pentagon officials acknowledged that Mr. Panetta was also pushing for...

SNIPPET: "New York City is the center of a public uproar as Internet blogger Pamela Gellar rises with an “anti-jihad” ad campaign." SNIPPET: "Gellar and her group are protesting the Jihad, which in definition is the religious duty of Muslims. According to the Dictionary of Islam, jihad is defined as “A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad . . . enjoined especially for the purpose of advancing Islam and repelling evil from Muslims.” The literal meaning of jihad, according to the British Broadcasting Network, “is struggle or effort, and it means much more than...

Bill Gertz has the grim news in the Washington Free Beacon: Hackers linked to China's government broke into one of the U.S. government's most sensitive computer networks, breaching a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands, according to defense and intelligence officials familiar with the incident. One official said the cyber breach was one of Beijing's most brazen cyber attacks against the United States and highlights a failure of the Obama administration to press China on its persistent cyber attacks. Disclosure of the cyber attack also comes amid heightened tensions in Asia, as the Pentagon moved...

Hackers linked to China’s government broke into one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive computer networks, breaching a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands, according to defense and intelligence officials familiar with the incident.

Hackers linked to China’s government broke into one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive computer networks, breaching a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands, according to defense and intelligence officials familiar with the incident.

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. Â“The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

The Government Admits The US Power Grid Can Be Taken Out At Any Time Walter Hickey Aug. 1, 2012, 7:00 PM The Government Accountability Office just released a report backing up earlier findings: because a series of recommendations were ignored, the U.S. electric grid remains highly susceptible to cyberattacks. The grid is reliant on a number of IT systems that have known and likely unknown vulnerabilities. The result of a cyberattack on the grid could result in damage to electricity control systems, power outages, and failures in safety equipment on a scale currently unknown. GAO believes that there are still...

Iranian nuclear facilities have reportedly been attacked by a “music” virus, turning on lab PCs at night and blasting AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” Mikko Hypponen, Chief Researcher at Finnish digital security firm F-secure, publicly released a letter he received from an unnamed Iranian scientist. The researcher, who claimed to work for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said that another virus has struck the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran and a secret underground research facility at Fordo, southwest of Tehran. The letter’s author reported that the virus shut down equipment (made by Germany’s Siemens Corporation) and automated systems at...

Some two weeks after Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta warned of a potential “cyber-Pearl Harbor” involving a possible attack on the electric grid, Mother Nature took the cue and hit the East Coast with a storm that left millions of us for days without electricity from the grid. Some said silent thanks for that old generator they’d thought to stick in the garage. Though it wasn’t a cyberattack, but Mother Nature gave parts of the grid a good lashing anyway. On my country road south of Annapolis, two transformers were blown down from their perches on telephone poles, and...

Some 60m euro is stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber raid, after fraudsters raid dozens of banks around the world. Sixty million euro has been stolen from bank accounts in a massive cyber bank raid after fraudsters raided dozens of financial institutions around the world. According to a joint report by software security firm McAfee and Guardian Analytics, more than 60 firms have suffered from what it has called an "insider level of understanding". "The fraudsters' objective in these attacks is to siphon large amounts from high balance accounts, hence the name chosen for this research - Operation...